


Self Made

by trainthief



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, M/M, Slow Burn, Trans Sherlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 09:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9377738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainthief/pseuds/trainthief
Summary: Quite simply, the story of Sherlock's trans self, and the way he loves John Watson





	

One day, sometime after the invention of electricity but before the invention of the Volkswagen Golf, a child was born. The actual date doesn’t matter, as you wouldn’t remember it any more than he did. This child led a wholly uninteresting life, so he is not the subject of our story, but I wish he were, because he was more or less happy. 

No, this story is to do with someone else, and it doesn’t begin at the beginning - as most stories do - but in the middle. For several miles and a handful of security gates down the road, another child was already five, and his life was substantially more interesting and less fortunate. 

This child was Sherlock Holmes. 

It is a common practice in many fields to give awards of distinction to those who are the best in their class. The Nobel Peace prize for those who strive for harmony, the Pulitzer for those who write, the Oscar for those of us who are Meryl Streep. But there has never been an honor bestowed to the child who is the most difficult to manage, and it is just as well, for Mr. and Mrs. Holmes likely would’ve found it a great embarrassment to display that on their mantle. Nevertheless, Sherlock earned it. 

Don’t get me wrong, he was a sweet little boy, with cheeks that were almost too soft, and wayward curly hair that reminded you of Christmas (always tucked beneath a pirates hat). But, as his more sensible older brother Mycroft would hear his father exclaim only once in a fit of rage (or at least his soft-natured equivalent) “the kid’s a real pain in the arse, you know”. He set experiments on fire like that was his sole intention, and his capacity for petulance was unfounded in a family of otherwise sensible intellects. His teachers rarely knew what to do with him other than set him up in the back of the class with a pile of books and stubbornly ignored pleas to keep his answers to himself and let the others learn too. 

He also absolutely refused to be told he was a girl. His parents attempts to call him by his given name were met with a level of silent treatment so severe you’d worry he’d gone deaf if you couldn’t see his glower from under the rim of his ever present tricorne. He insisted on being called his middle name (Sherlock, which his parents repeatedly tried to reason was also a girls name, not that he ever seemed to care) or if all else failed, whatever pirates name he’d decided to take on that week. 

His brother Mycroft (who, incidentally, would’ve been in the running for honors in the categories of Most Well-Behaved Child, and Most Unlovable) figured it out far sooner than his parents did. They were old fashioned, and he always was the smart one. While his parents were still throwing around phrases like “phase” and “confused”, Mycroft knew exactly what was going on. As surely as the crow flies and thundering clouds seldom rain, Sherlock was trans. It took him about 8 seconds to come to the conclusion with a certainty when he actually bothered to give it serious thought, and another 3 to decide exactly what to do from there. 

There really was nothing for it. Sherlock’s parents loved him, but while they figured out just how to do it properly it would be up to Mycroft to raise him right. How tedious. 

His first act as Sherlock’s newly (self) appointed guardian was arguably the most sentimental thing he ever did from that point out: he bought Sherlock a toy sword to accompany his pirate hat. After that, however, he was all business. He was thoroughly accustomed to raising himself, as his parents - despite their relative intelligence - had become out of their depth in regards to his maturity by the time he’d reached the age of 7. Sherlock was simply another small burden on a mind already taxed with the problems of the universe, or at least that’s how he would’ve quite dramatically described it. 

All that said, however, he did try his very best. He introduced Sherlock to his favorite schools of thought in both science and philosophy (despite how mind-numbingly slow he found Sherlock to be), taught him everything he knew about the compartmentalization of thought and emotion for maximum intellectual capability, and even introduced him to other children for some beneficial socialization (although that had by all accounts been a mistake, as Mycroft forgot to factor in just how much stupider they were even when in comparison to his slow little brother). Sherlock continued to earn his title as the most difficult child, but he seemed happier, and when Mycroft incorporated that factor into his assessment of the situation he found it to be a success. 

Unfortunately, however, these early days turned out to be the easy ones. As Sherlock grew, often in ways he did not like, so did his emotional range. He wasn’t simply put out by the world’s incorrect perception of him anymore, he was downright distraught. 

It’s been said that there’s no worse sound than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway. The Holmes family could tell you that was quite objectively not true. The worst sound is that of someone who knows perfectly well how to play the violin, but who is too emotionally tormented to do it properly. The carefully maintained halls of their ancestral home frequently rang with Bach’s Partita 2: Chaconne, which would then morph into Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro, which would in turn morph into a particularly angry rendition of Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant, all of which rounded off with angry discordant notes and a piece of furniture being kicked. This happened at all hours, though most often the ungodly ones, and those were the days Sherlock was particularly lucky his family loved him, as he likely wouldn’t have lived if they didn’t. 

Despite their love, however, his parents refused to allow him hormone treatment. This not only bothered him on a personal level, which would’ve been bad enough, but it made absolutely no damn sense to him. He had a condition, for which there was a known treatment, and yet he was being refused that treatment out of sentiment. The very knowledge convinced him of the uselessness of sentiment altogether, and he dedicated quite an amount of frustrated passion toward its eradication. 

Luckily and despite all odds, he made it safely enough to the age of majority without picking up too many bad habits beyond a bit of pot smoking and the tendency not to talk for hours on end (mostly due to the fact that he hated his high pitched voice). Mycroft had by this time already achieved a level of importance in the British government so notable that he had no official name for his position, or at least none he could speak of in any situation that wasn’t highly classified. He used this leverage to his advantage to do the second most sentimental thing of his life, which was to rush Sherlock through the necessary bureaucracy quickly enough to get him a prescription of testosterone for his 18th birthday. 

That was the nearest Sherlock ever came to hugging him. 

The Holmes parents may have marked the day Sherlock started testosterone as a day of loss, as many parents ridiculously do. However by all unbiased accounts the gains quite outnumbered the losses, especially in Sherlock’s mind. He gained another 4 inches of height. He gained a voice so deep he couldn’t help but talk sometimes for all that he loved it. He gained a sense of self love he found disturbingly unfamiliar, and he gained confidence. 

That last one might’ve been more of a loss, for all it did. 

A Sherlock armed with confidence and unleashed onto the streets of London was a thing more dangerous than Mycroft had expected, despite his enormous brainpower. Sherlock had always been the more emotional and directionless of the two, and now that he was no longer so held back by feelings of deep dysphoria he had a thirst for knowledge and experience and a tendency to find it in all the wrong places. His predisposition for stunted emotional expression only served to heighten the issue, and Mycroft wondered, the day he found Sherlock curled up and writhing in the corner of a crack den, whether all of this couldn’t be blamed on him. 

Not that guilt as an emotion did anything to heighten his ability to respond to the scenario before him, he realized, and he quickly brushed it aside. 

A cycle was established then, one that Mycroft never really learned how to break. One of rehab and repetition. There wasn’t much for it, no matter how much power and influence he flexed. There were merely moments of relief and improvement. A single step up on a ladder with an impossible number of rungs. The day Sherlock started making lists was one. The day he met Lestrade was another. For all that he didn’t seem to care, Sherlock was certainly slowly improving himself, albeit at a pace that would have him a dead man before he was a good one. 

That was, until one day, which began entirely like all the rest, and is the middle of the story where we will begin. The day Mycroft came into his stark office as he always did, and sat in his uncomfortable chair as he always had, and prepared to deal with whatever international crises were to be thrown at him. He was prepared for anything, except the words he heard next, which would’ve made him drop his morning tea had his predisposition for practicality not overruled his tendency toward the dramatic. 

“Your brother’s made a friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Not yet sure just how long this will become, it depends entirely on what interest I get and how I feel while writing it. There'll be another chapter in about a week though, or possibly less. 
> 
> Before you ask, I've left Euros out of this version because I love myself. 
> 
> Feel free to come say hello, I'm on twitter at SherlockProbz! Thank you for reading, and have a good one.


End file.
